How My Tinnitus Made Me a CEO

We had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with SAE alumni Luigi Cosi, who studied the sound production degree at SAE and who is now the founder and CEO of OIKLA!

We discussed all things audio – from preventing hearing loss to starting your own audio company.

Who is Luigi Cosi?

Luigi is the founder of OIKLA and a big music fan. Working as a DJ in Italy from the age of 16, Luigi has always been fascinated by sound and how it brings people together.

However, Luigi unfortunately began suffering from tinnitus and was devastated to discover that there is currently no cure for his pain. Because of this frustration about the lack of solutions, Luigi’s passion for preventing hear loss grew and he came up with an idea for a start up during his time at SAE:

“I had a great lecturer, Hugh Harlow, and I remember he was explaining about EQ curves and how the hearing changes based on the sound level and I had a classic ‘ding!’ moment where I thought: ‘oh God, why is nobody doing this?’. So that was the trigger for me – how come nobody has done this? How come it is not on the market as a solution? So, that’s how I started from a technical point of view. Then I really spent the first half a year until the middle of the second year just researching. So, yeah, that’s how it started, really. It started right in class, during a normal lecture whilst studying my audio production degree”.

Thus, OIKLA was born and went on to grow into successful business venture that works hard to maximise audio at a safe level: ensuring an enjoyable listening experience that won’t lead to hearing loss.

Find OIKLA here

Are you interested in studying audio at SAE? Find out more here!